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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm editor Kandi Kennard, joined by fellow editor Katie Lambert's. Hello, Katie.

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Speaker 1: I am so excited to do the first of what

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Speaker 1: maybe many installments of fan picks colin three greatest innovators

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Speaker 1: in history? And why three, you may ask, Um, It's

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Speaker 1: because one Katie and I are both so crazy about

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Speaker 1: we had to share him, and then she had strong

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Speaker 1: feelings about another and I another. So without any further ado, um,

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Speaker 1: I did want to mention some of the other fabulous

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Speaker 1: names that the blog readers tossed out, and even though

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Speaker 1: we can't cover all of the innovators you suggested, we

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Speaker 1: picked three who we thought made huge impacts on society, culture, science, health,

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Speaker 1: the printed word content. We got a great suggestion from

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Speaker 1: Ben about Nikola Tesla. I really wanted to do just

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Speaker 1: so I could talk about the earthquake machine and the

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Speaker 1: death ray that Ben mentioned. And another big vote for

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Speaker 1: Jesus from Steve, which I thought would have been a

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Speaker 1: really interesting way to take this. Candice who spells her

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Speaker 1: name with an eye not an a. Uh, well that's

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Speaker 1: probably why. She suggested Alexander Hamilton, one of Thomas Jefferson's

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Speaker 1: greatest enemies. And she wrote a whole list of things

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Speaker 1: he accomplished, including writing the Federalist Papers, founding the Bank

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Speaker 1: of New York, serving as the first Secretary at the Treasury,

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Speaker 1: founding the US meant and the Coast Guard. And she

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Speaker 1: goes on and on. But did he have an earthquake machine? No, no,

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Speaker 1: he did not. He was pretty good looking, though, as

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Speaker 1: far as historical personages go, I will give him that. Um.

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Speaker 1: And then Aaron suggested a woman named Ada Lovelace, who

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Speaker 1: was credited, she says, with being the first computer programmer

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Speaker 1: and for inventing the first computer programming language, all from

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifteen to eighteen fifty two. Pretty wild, huh. And

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Speaker 1: we so did want a woman on this list. So

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Speaker 1: let's get into it. The three inventors we picked our

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Speaker 1: Johann Gutenberg, Leonardo da Vinci, and Benjamin Franklin. And we

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Speaker 1: will start off with Johann Gutenberg, who you might know

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Speaker 1: as the inventor of the printing press. And because of Gutenberg,

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Speaker 1: you have al those lovely mass market paperbacks in your bookshelves.

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Speaker 1: He was born in the fourteenth century to a wealthy

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Speaker 1: German family. And even though we know him for his

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Speaker 1: contributions to the printing world, he began as a goldsmith

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Speaker 1: and then dabbled as a gym cutter. And you were

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Speaker 1: telling me he did something else interesting too. He doubled

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Speaker 1: in glasses making as well in his time in Strasbourg, France. Wow,

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Speaker 1: he did a little bit of everything. A renaissance man

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Speaker 1: before the Renaissance, shall we say, And he was above

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Speaker 1: all things a businessman and an entrepreneur because what he

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Speaker 1: did was not sir and and creating a printing press.

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Speaker 1: It was taking three existing innovations paper, ink and movable

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Speaker 1: type and combining them into the Guttenberg press. But he

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Speaker 1: did not come up with the idea of movable type

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Speaker 1: on his own. That actually originated back in China. Around

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Speaker 1: six D the Chinese began using engraved wooden blocks to

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Speaker 1: print in a process called sylography, and today that's still

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Speaker 1: an art, using wooden carvings to create some sort of

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Speaker 1: print on paper. And then around ten forty one to

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Speaker 1: one man came up with movable type, arranging the wooden

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Speaker 1: blocks on a tray, heating it and then pressing it

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Speaker 1: on paper to transfer the ink, and then in thirteenth

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Speaker 1: century Korea, metal type setting was created with up to

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Speaker 1: one hundred thousand pieces of type and about ten different fonts.

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Speaker 1: But the problem with movable type and China and Korea

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Speaker 1: was that there were so many characters it didn't take off,

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Speaker 1: so the art length quished for a bit, I guess

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Speaker 1: you could say, until the ideas of paper and ink

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Speaker 1: eventually made it over to Europe through different trade routes

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Speaker 1: and different conquests, and Garten realized that he had his

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Speaker 1: hands on the perfect alphabet to create a good type

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Speaker 1: setting system, so he used this new type of ink

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Speaker 1: that he created. It was an alloy uh made of

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Speaker 1: lead and tin and another ingredient that wouldn't shrink after

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Speaker 1: it was cooled, and it's actually still used today. So

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Speaker 1: combining this ink with paper originally using vellum, and then

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Speaker 1: the type of press that was used to squeeze grapes

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Speaker 1: and olives for wine and olive oil, he was able

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Speaker 1: to make actual printed materials. And the nice thing about

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Speaker 1: that metal movable type was that not only was it

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Speaker 1: faster to use, those letters made a much sharper impression

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Speaker 1: and therefore more durable and more uniform actually than the

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Speaker 1: woodblock printing was, because you could make each letter look

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Speaker 1: exactly the same, so all of your a's on a

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Speaker 1: page would look like all of the other a's. And

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Speaker 1: Gutenberg also printed on front and back of the pages,

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Speaker 1: eventually leading to the very famous forty two line Gutenberg Bible.

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Speaker 1: People today still talk about the pleasant layout design of

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Speaker 1: this Bible, forty two lines arranged in columns, playing of

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Speaker 1: space on either side of the page. Two copies he

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Speaker 1: printed up this book. It came in two volumes for

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Speaker 1: he totaled one thousand, two d two pages, and it

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Speaker 1: was printed in fourteen fifty five. And consulting a couple

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Speaker 1: of different sources, I was a little bit unsure as

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Speaker 1: to whether Guttenberg himself printed the Bible or whether by

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Speaker 1: this time he lost management of his printing press to

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Speaker 1: the man who would put up a capital for him

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Speaker 1: when he started his business. So if you have any

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Speaker 1: knowledge about that, and maybe you can fill us in.

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Speaker 1: But regardless, the Bible came out, it was extremely popular.

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Speaker 1: The rate of literate people in Europe at this time

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Speaker 1: was on the rise, so it was very good for

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Speaker 1: disseminating reading materials well and when not that many people

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Speaker 1: could afford to buy an illuminated manuscript, they were very,

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Speaker 1: very expensive. You're talking monks putting together these books for years. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: handwritten copies, so to expedite the process was huge and

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Speaker 1: it led to other developments too, not only in the

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Speaker 1: ways of the Reformation, Renaissance, and scientific revelation, but even

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Speaker 1: to the advent of book fairs. The Frankfurt book Fair

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Speaker 1: was huge. People came to get copies of reading materials.

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Speaker 1: I love book fars personally. I always they come back

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Speaker 1: and vogue. But by fifteen hundred, after my little digression

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Speaker 1: there half a million books had been printed and the

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Speaker 1: Guttenberg Revolution. Author John Mann says that a third of

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Speaker 1: all books in Germany printed between fifteen eighteen to fifty

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Speaker 1: eight were works by Martin Luther, essentially launching the Reformation.

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Speaker 1: So you could say that the Gutenberg press was as

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Speaker 1: simplistic as putting the printed word on a page, But

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Speaker 1: other history scholars would beg to differ, saying that it

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Speaker 1: put the world on its end and launched a huge

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Speaker 1: religious refer nation. And as a little aside, if you

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Speaker 1: are more interested in the printing aspects of Guttenberg's developments

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Speaker 1: and contributions as opposed to his uh shall we say, cultural, religious,

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Speaker 1: and social contributions. There were two Europeans who followed who

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Speaker 1: made additional efforts to help perfect the printing method. And

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Speaker 1: these are sort of whimsical, but I like them, so

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Speaker 1: I'll tell you anyway. There was Nicholas Jensen from France

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Speaker 1: who created Seraph's, which are those little tail flourishes at

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Speaker 1: the end of words and letters that you see. It's

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Speaker 1: an optical illusion that keeps your eye traveling across the

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Speaker 1: page to keep reading. Then from Italy we have a

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Speaker 1: man named Aldus Minutius who created italics Italics Italy, catch

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Speaker 1: the drift, and this was designed to maximize the number

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Speaker 1: of words on the page because they were all slanted.

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Speaker 1: So you see, thank you Guttenburg for reformations and Sarah's

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Speaker 1: really you put it all in motion. And the printing

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Speaker 1: press actually brings us into our next innovator, Di Vinci,

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Speaker 1: because he came up with his own innovations on gutten

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Speaker 1: Burg's printing press that would have made it much easier

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Speaker 1: to print. If his designs had been used, one person

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Speaker 1: would have been able to print instead of an entire

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Speaker 1: crew of people. But of course, being Da Vinci and

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Speaker 1: being rather secretive with his notebooks, no one actually saw

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Speaker 1: those designs. You might have heard of Da Vinci um.

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Speaker 1: He was the quintessential renaissance man. He painted a little

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Speaker 1: painting called the Mona Lisa, and also The Last Supper

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Speaker 1: and the Virgin of the Rocks. But painting wasn't all

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Speaker 1: he was about. He was very much interested in science

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Speaker 1: and in inventing things. And some of his inventions, and

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Speaker 1: I'm using Jane McGrath's research for this one, were an

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Speaker 1: orna thopter, which is a flying machine with wings that

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Speaker 1: the pilot could operate um. But he didn't quite manage

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Speaker 1: to pull that one off. He underestimated the importance of

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Speaker 1: feathers to a bird, and his own actor never would

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Speaker 1: actually have flown. He also designed a diving apparatus, which

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Speaker 1: is like a primitive version of a scuba suit or

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Speaker 1: a diving bell actually, as well as a parish shoot,

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Speaker 1: and the idea of a telescope um. He proposed that

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Speaker 1: lenses and mirrors would enable us to get closer to

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Speaker 1: the nature of the planets, and some of Da Fincy's

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Speaker 1: most interesting innovations were made ever more understandable and comprehensible

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Speaker 1: to me by virtue of Katie being our resident health editor.

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Speaker 1: And I am very much excited about the other thing

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Speaker 1: that Da Vinci was excited about. And I'm thrilled. Can

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Speaker 1: I interject because Katy is about to come across as

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Speaker 1: more morbid than I've ever sounded, So have edit, Katie.

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Speaker 1: I will take your morbid crown um da Vinci and autopsy. Actually,

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Speaker 1: he was very into empirical observation. His teacher Verocchio, had

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Speaker 1: told him it was important to sketch from life, so

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Speaker 1: he would take his notebook places and sketch people and

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Speaker 1: things exactly as they were. And part of learning to

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Speaker 1: sketch the human form was to see actually how human

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Speaker 1: bodies work. So he would go to these operating theaters,

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Speaker 1: which is how medical students used to learn back then.

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Speaker 1: And it will be a bunch of med students standing

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Speaker 1: around this corpse while a man cut it apart, and

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Speaker 1: a different man who wasn't even looking at the body

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Speaker 1: would be just talking from a book, this ancient wisdom

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Speaker 1: about the human body and things that weren't even necessarily true.

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Speaker 1: It could be a complete misunderstanding of how blood circulates

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Speaker 1: in the body. And even though what the students were

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Speaker 1: looking at didn't even remotely match what the text was saying,

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Speaker 1: they always deferred to the text rather than to their

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Speaker 1: own senses. But a great way to propagate knowledge and

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Speaker 1: advanced to feeling of medicine. It really was not. But

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Speaker 1: because of that, da Vinci sort of took matters into

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Speaker 1: his own hands and got really interested in dissection. He

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Speaker 1: injected a human brain with hot wax so he could

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Speaker 1: look at the ventricles, and took the skull apart and

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Speaker 1: sketched it from different angles. He boiled cow's eyeballs and

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Speaker 1: egg yolks so he could section them and see exactly

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Speaker 1: how the inside of them worked. But what he really

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Speaker 1: understood was the female form. Right. Oh yes, in case

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Speaker 1: you didn't know, um, Supposedly, when you're preg meant suppressed

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Speaker 1: menstrual blood turns into breast milk or DaVinci helpful, I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and have to tell you that that's

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Speaker 1: not true. I'm sorry if that makes anyone sad. But

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Speaker 1: what he did figure out was how the optic nerve works,

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Speaker 1: which no one up to that time knew and also

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Speaker 1: how kidney stones are formed. So even though I may

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Speaker 1: be joking a little bit about some of his innovations

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Speaker 1: that turned out to be wrong, he was making suppositions

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Speaker 1: and putting forth research that no one really had. Like

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Speaker 1: you were saying, people were relying on ancient or not ancient,

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Speaker 1: that's not fair. People were relying on old and outmoded

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Speaker 1: texts to influence the way they practice medicine. But Da

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Speaker 1: Vinci's innovations changed all of that well. And the thing

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Speaker 1: I loved with the questions he had that no one

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Speaker 1: really had been asking their notes in his notebooks of

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Speaker 1: you know, how does a fetus breathe? What do testicles do? Like?

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Speaker 1: Why do we have this? And he had such a

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Speaker 1: curious inventive mind. Another curious inventor was Benjamin Franklin. And

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Speaker 1: the curious case of Benjamin Franklin was that he was

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Speaker 1: born a British colonist and Austin in seventeen oh six,

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Speaker 1: and he died an American in Philadelphia, So he lived

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Speaker 1: for a really long time, especially for that time frame.

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Speaker 1: And I found on PBS UH they did a special

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Speaker 1: about Benjamin Franklin, and they had a web page about

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Speaker 1: ben A to Z, and from A to Z they

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Speaker 1: wrote out all the different things he was. Seriously a

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Speaker 1: couple of attributes for each letter, and I wanted to

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Speaker 1: share four of my favorite letters. B balloon, enthusiast, Comma, bifocals, inventor,

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Speaker 1: F founding, father, flirt, firefighter, OH, organizer parentheses, militia, fire department,

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Speaker 1: street cleaning, closed parentheses, o'domino maker, and then the volunteer, visionary,

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Speaker 1: vegetarian Borarily. I just I love that he really was

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Speaker 1: so many things, and maybe he's belittled a little bit

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Speaker 1: for some silly things that we think might have been

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Speaker 1: gaffs or uh mistakes on his behalf, like wanting to

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Speaker 1: propose a turkey as the national bird of the United States.

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Speaker 1: But this is what he had to say about the

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Speaker 1: American eagle, and it really gives us a glimpse into

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Speaker 1: the way that his mind worked and and to his

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Speaker 1: type of character. He said, for my own part, I

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Speaker 1: wish the eagle had not been chosen the representative of

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Speaker 1: our country. He is a bird of bad moral character.

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Speaker 1: He does not get his living, honestly, And he goes

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Speaker 1: on to explain that the eagle pretty much sits on

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Speaker 1: a high perch, watches all the others do the work,

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Speaker 1: and then goes and takes their prey. So he was

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Speaker 1: very much a man who was fond of earning your living.

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Speaker 1: And he started out in a printing shop. He wanted

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Speaker 1: to be a sailor, but his father said, now you can't.

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Speaker 1: You have to work in a printing shop, and so

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Speaker 1: he did, and from there he made a big impact

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Speaker 1: on media with the Philadelphia Gazette Poor Richards Almanac. He

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Speaker 1: was a scientist developing a single fluid theory of electricity

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Speaker 1: to do the first political cartoon. He was a postmaster,

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Speaker 1: a philosopher, a dip that a musician created the bifocals.

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Speaker 1: I could go on and on and on, but I'll

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Speaker 1: stop and tell you some of the more interesting tidbits

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Speaker 1: about his innovations and contributions to society. He actually created

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Speaker 1: an instrument called the glass armonica, and it looks like

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Speaker 1: a pianoforte with um glass tumblers, a series of glass

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Speaker 1: tumblers inside and the glass spins and you dampen your

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Speaker 1: fingers and then you play them like the scene in

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Speaker 1: Miss Congeniality with Sandra Bullock playing the glasses. So it

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Speaker 1: was an actual instrument that he put together. The only

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Speaker 1: time that Sandra Bullock and Benment Franklin have ever been

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Speaker 1: in the same symptoms. And you didn't think we could

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Speaker 1: do it. This is what we girls are capable of.

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Speaker 1: In three he founded the American Philosophical Society. And the

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Speaker 1: purpose of this, to quote Franklin, was to promote useful

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Speaker 1: knowledge in the colonies. And it's still around today, still

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Speaker 1: essentially serving the same purpose. It's engaging people from different

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Speaker 1: professions and dialogue to disseminate knowledge and understanding. And the

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Speaker 1: original members were a physician, mathematician, geographer, philosopher, botanist, chemist,

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Speaker 1: and an engineer. And it was very similar to the

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Speaker 1: idea of a salon. You get intelligent people together to

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Speaker 1: discuss these things and to better society essentially. And in

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Speaker 1: addition to his I guess intellectual knowledge and contributions, one

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Speaker 1: of his physical contributions was forming a firefighting club. This

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Speaker 1: was a group of men in Philadelphia who got together

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Speaker 1: in seventeen thirty six to incorporate the Union Fire Company

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Speaker 1: and they were all required to have buckets to help

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Speaker 1: put off flames and bags to remove valuables from homes

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Speaker 1: because fires were incredibly common with all the wooden structors

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Speaker 1: around and all the fireplaces that abounded, and it was

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Speaker 1: members protecting members essentially, so if you weren't a member,

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Speaker 1: you were kind of out of luck. But from here

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Speaker 1: he had the idea to create mutual insurance, people paying

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Speaker 1: in for protection, and if any member of society lost

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Speaker 1: his home to fire, if he had this mutual insurance,

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Speaker 1: the group would give the money to him to recoup

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Speaker 1: him for his losses. So pretty and gene yes, And

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Speaker 1: to talk about his political side a little bit, he's

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Speaker 1: known for starting the Great Compromise during the drafting of

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Speaker 1: the Constitution. Originally he didn't really go along with this idea.

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Speaker 1: He wanted a unicameral legislation, but eventually he said, we'll

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Speaker 1: solve the problem of representation by having a House made

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Speaker 1: up of representatives that are determined by state's population, and

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Speaker 1: then senators, of which will have the same number from

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Speaker 1: every state. There was a moment when people thought the

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Speaker 1: Constitution wouldn't get signed because people were still pretty upset

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Speaker 1: about some differences among them. He made a very very

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Speaker 1: passionate speech and implored everyone to sign, and almost everyone did,

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Speaker 1: but not everyone. So he died with this legacy of

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Speaker 1: being the ultimate American citizen. He really was everything to

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Speaker 1: all subject areas and inventions as simple as bifocals on

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Speaker 1: the lightning rod. The Franklin still things like this that

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Speaker 1: still impact our society today. Speaking of things we still

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Speaker 1: use today, Franklin invented the flexible urine catheter. While although

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Speaker 1: it doesn't sound all of that exciting, has extremely practical uses.

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Speaker 1: And if you've ever been in the hospital and needed one,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure you're grateful. But that just goes to show

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Speaker 1: that the greatest innovations round the gamut from small practical

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Speaker 1: things to grandiose ideologies. And we're so thankful for all

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Speaker 1: the innovators in history who have made our world what

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Speaker 1: it is today. And if you've been listening and you've

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Speaker 1: gotten an idea for another innovator who was not proposed

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Speaker 1: on the first ground of comments, if you want to,

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Speaker 1: you can. You can still post a comment a couple

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Speaker 1: of days later um on that particular blog entry, or

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Speaker 1: you can wait until we do a little podcast round

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Speaker 1: up about this topic and another one when you visit

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Speaker 1: our blocks or email us a history podcast at how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. And for more information about Benjamin Franklin,

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Speaker 1: lots of Da Vinci and some good old Gutenberg printing.

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Speaker 1: Be sure to visit the website at how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

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Speaker 1: Visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to

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Speaker 1: check out this stuff you missed in History Class blog

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